Tea Party Protesters Have Their History Wrong

HARRISBURG, PA (November 13, 2009) – Tea Party protesters will descend on Harrisburg Saturday to vent about state budget policies and government in general with a march through the city and an event at the Capitol headlined by former Congressman Dick Armey.

Mr. Armey and other forces in the Tea Party Movement may benefit from a refresher course on American history before they come to Harrisburg. While they invoke the Boston Tea Party of 1773 to rail against taxes and public spending, the Tea Party was actually a protest against a tax cut for a multinational corporation of the day, the British East India Company. The tax break was part of an effort by the British Crown to create a tea monopoly in the American colonies.

“The Tea Party protesters have their history wrong and their anger is misplaced,” said Sharon Ward, Director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center. “The Boston Tea Party was about tax fairness. Were these protesters acting in the spirit of the real Boston Tea Party, they would be protesting corporate tax loopholes that allow profitable corporations to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in Pennsylvania taxes and leave the rest of us paying more.”

Ward said all Pennsylvanians should support efficient government but that Tea Party protesters want to go much further, dismantling public structures that provide education, public safety, job training, health care and human services at a time when many middle class families are struggling to weather the recession.

“We learned during this year’s state budget crisis that when you cut services or don’t pay for them on time, there are real consequences for families and communities,” Ward said. “Working parents lose childcare for their kids, library hours are cut and hospitals are forced to lay off staff, jeopardizing the quality of our health care.

“The Tea Party protesters frequently denounce the federal stimulus package, but unemployment would be much worse today without it. It was public sector spending that picked up where the private sector dropped off. That is basic economics. Angry protesters don’t change that.

“Right now, unemployment insurance, job training and public health care programs are the only thing keeping many Pennsylvania families from losing their homes and savings and falling into bankruptcy. In many cases, it is the public programs that these protesters want to eliminate that are preserving the personal freedom of out-of-work Pennsylvanians and their families.

“Spending and tax cuts, the one-size-fits-all panacea prescribed by the Tea Party protesters, may benefit the powerful and well-connected but they offer little value to Pennsylvanians who have been laid off and have no taxable income. We should be doing everything we can to invest in Pennsylvania, get people back to work and come out of the recession stronger.”

Saturday’s march is sponsored by several groups, including FreedomWorks, a nonprofit group that paid Dick Armey $550,000 in 2008 for serving as its chairman. He will be the keynote speaker at the Harrisburg protest.

Mr. Armey, the former Republican Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, recently told a New York Times Magazine reporter he thought claims that federal health care reform will establish “death panels” for elderly and sick Americans was “silly,” but added, “if people want to believe that, it’s OK with me.”

“Pennsylvanians should really question the credibility of someone who is perfectly comfortable allowing lies to percolate about something as important as health care,” Ward said. “What else isn’t Dick Armey telling us?”